Talk:MEIKO/@comment-199.87.125.136-20190603171734/@comment-53539-20190603203649
Actually, thats not the problem. Meiko started out as a V1 vocal and was popular in the V1 era, being super popular compared to Kaito and the most popular V1 overall. Then came Miku and for about a year after her release Miku dominated the Vocaloid scene, added to this was the Kagamines and later Luka in 2009. Kaito was able to find his place in 2008 because of the lack of males, being either the female voiced Len or Gackpo who was harder to use, so his vocal as filling a void. Meiko was... On the other hand a female vocal and there were several options by the end of 2009 for vocaloids who were female to choose from. The biggest issue was with Meiko is that her vocal lacks distinction and its always been the problem with Meiko even this early on. To put it plainly, she didn't appeal because she was an older female with fair less stand out traits on an older engine. Even now... There just is so many female vocaloids and Meiko's problem is while she is a decent singer, no problems as she is voiced by a professional... Her vocal is in the "common vocal type" category and that means a small number of Vocaloids compete with her voice such as Anon and Kanon, Mirai, etc. To top it off... Eh... Everything Meiko does... There is just a Vocaloid who does it better. Rock music? You've got IA Rocks, VY1, Flower, etc who do it better. Pop? Miku and a host of other Vocaloids. You name it. There is a Vocaloid who does it better. And this really hurts Meiko more then anything, I know AddicttoHeroines on youtube called her the Queen of Rock, but thats not been true for years, if at all since V2 as Lily came along. If you own Mirai, she does everything the Meiko Straight vocal does, but does everything better. If not for the English and other Japanese voicebanks, Mirai would knock Meiko's abilities out completely, so its only because CFM added those Mirai has some disadvantage. But the issue then is... Well... Their CFM extra voicebanks, like all their voicebanks their vocal range and tempo range are all V2 ranges at a time more Vocaloids just have larger ranges to offer. And thats the problem. Meiko, however is one of the Big 8, part of the CFM 6 Vocaloids so despite being the least popular of these two groups... She is among the top 15 Vocaloids out of 70. PEople who say things about her popularity don't really know the overall situation Meiko's in. She is doing well compared to at least 3/5s of all Vocaloids, and that means she isn't fearing consquences from not being super popular. All I'd say is that CFM is top of the rankings for popularity, and you can't call any of their vocals unpopular at all. Their not the best quality though, but that original Miku V2 was LQ and it sold 40,000 units... evening selling 20,000+ more units by the end of the V2 lifespan when the VY1 vocal and generally other vocals including the Appends were out. It was competing with HQ V2 vocals (most late V2 voicebanks were better then early ones). Quality is important to Vocaloid... But it doesn't mean that quality results in instant success. It took a number of years for VY1 to sell enough and that was because they offered the vocal in so many different ways and on Vocaloids spin off versions.